{"id":6,"date":"2019-05-16T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-05-16T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cota1.wpengine.com\/cotaforteamasher\/2019\/05\/16\/may-2019-update\/"},"modified":"2019-05-16T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-05-16T00:00:00","slug":"may-2019-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cota.org\/cotaforteamasher\/2019\/05\/16\/may-2019-update\/","title":{"rendered":"May 2019 Update"},"content":{"rendered":"

The twins are now 11 months old, which means that Asher is 8 months post-transplant. The past 8 months have had their ups and downs, but it’s mostly been good.<\/span><\/p>\n

Twice a day Asher takes medicines that suppress his body’s natural immune system. He will take these medicines for life because his new heart, although it’s keeping him alive, will always be a foreign object and our amazing bodies are designed to fight off anything that doesn’t belong. Because of this compromised immune system, he can’t fight off even the little things like the common cold. Unfortunately he was hospitalized twice this winter for the cold and a stomach bug. It’s so easy to see just how weak his system is because his twin will get the same bug and be healthy again in a few days at home, with little to no intervention. He will be admitted to the hospital for one to two weeks, needing oxygen and suctioning to help him breathe.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, besides being prone to sickness, we are seeing him develop and reach some growth milestones. His skills right now include feeding himself small finger foods, sucking on a food squeeze pouch, rolling onto his sides, holding onto toys-balls especially, much better head and neck control (almost perfect), and able to sit up unassisted for a few minutes. <\/span><\/p>\n

He has physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech therapy services that come to the house every 1-2 weeks to work on different skills. He also had surgery in January to place a gastronomy tube, so he is fed all his formula and medicine through that instead of the tube through his nose. We are hoping he will eventually not need the g-tube but he has some work to do to take liquids by mouth. The next upcoming procedure is to look at his throat and swallowing.<\/span><\/p>\n

We are so fortunate that his first heart biopsy at 6 months post tx came back clear of rejection, his echocardiograms have been normal, and we have his medicine levels evened out where they need to be. He did need his aorta ballooned at 6 months post, but now things are looking good. We are spaced out to cardiology appointments every 6 weeks now.<\/span><\/p>\n

At home, Asher is so happy and smiles all the time. He loves to play with balls, eat everything, and be around people.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The twins are now 11 months old, which means that Asher is 8 months post-transplant. The past 8 months have had their ups and downs, but it’s mostly been good. Twice a day Asher takes medicines that suppress his body’s natural immune system. He will take these medicines for life because his new heart, although […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-6","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cota.org\/cotaforteamasher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cota.org\/cotaforteamasher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cota.org\/cotaforteamasher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cota.org\/cotaforteamasher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cota.org\/cotaforteamasher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cota.org\/cotaforteamasher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}